Esquire's Answer Fella believes that there are no stupid questions, just stupid people who don't ask questions, fearing they'll look stupid. So ask Answer Fella anything. If he doesn't know the answer, he'll find out who does or who has a guess that sounds right.

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When peeing in a urinal, how can I minimize splashback?

There are no easy answers when it comes to trouser tracks. Splashback reduction has long stumped pissoir engineers; it is, in fact, that profession's second-biggest problem, nearly as great a challenge as trying to explain exactly why you wound up measuring urination arcs for a living.

Unfortunately, Gary Uhl, crapper giant American Standard's head designer -- a man known as the Mozart of micturition science, it was Uhl who found that the mass of the ass plus the heat of the meat equals the angle of the dangle, the stunning discovery that revolutionized the urinal world -- refused to comment. (Rumors that Mr. Uhl is nearing completion of his long-awaited Shaft-Shaker may help explain his reluctance.) But the fine folks over at Kohler, whose "Human Factors" group devotes significant time to studying pee-stream trajectories, suggest you aim off center and three or so inches above the drain, where well-designed urinals are likeliest to curve. Avoid vertical surfaces and sharp angles.

Kathryn Streeby, Kohler's marketing manager for sanitary products, tells AF, "Where we're transitioning our designs in urinals as we go forward is creating angles that are almost cone shaped, to follow the trajectory of the urine stream. So you don't have to personally do anything."

Except maybe zip up afterward.

Is there a protocol among auto manufacturers regarding on which side of the car the gas cap is placed?

While humankind's embrace of technology has lifted us to godlike status in many spheres, some fundamental mysteries are beyond our power to solve. Here's one: No such gas-cap protocol exists, nor ever has, nor ever shall. Einstein himself spent his last years at Princeton refining his Unifying Theory of Gas-Cap Placement, until hope one day soured to rage, whereupon he disemboweled his beloved dog, Pip, with his '52 Hudson's dipstick.*

"It is an endless debate," says Ford Motor Company's Michael J. Harrigan, who also chairs the Society of Automotive Engineers' Fuel Systems Committee. "There are many reasons given for what side is correct, but there is no industry agreement."

One auto-industry specialist who wishes to be identified only as "Tom from the Midwest" tells AF that as a general rule, a car with a single exhaust pipe will have its gas cap or "filler neck" placed on the opposite side. Tom adds that he once asked Subaru why his car's gas cap was located on the passenger side and was told that the company engineers wanted to enable any driver who had run out of gas to use a gas can to refill his tank on the side of the vehicle away from passing traffic.

*AF wishes to note, for the sake of any exceedingly gullible reader, that this anecdote is not entirely factual. Einstein's dog's real name was Gary Uhl.

How did the area where a baseball team's relief pitchers warm up come to be called a "bullpen"?

Ah, baseball, sport of the gods. If only AF had a dime for every hour he has spent pondering DIPS theory, one-run versus big-inning strategies, and Barry Bonds's flaxseed oil, Answer Tot's 529 fund could finance more than a year's tuition at the Rutgers Institute of Urine Studies.

As for the bullpen, who knows? Casey Stengel, the Ole Perfessor, said it was because that's where pitchers sat around and shot the breeze. Others claim that the term came from Bull Durham ballpark signs of yore. Its current baseball usage dates to 1915 in print. As far back as 1877, though, bullpen was used by a Cincinnati sports page to denote a roped-off area in foul territory where fans stood to watch the game.

The term may have come from "bull pen," slang for a stockade where prisoners were held, a usage that appeared first in 1809. By 1903, at any rate, "bull pen" had come to refer to any enclosed waiting area, including Mrs. Fella's boudoir.

We went to a summer wedding at a trendy New York place. Since it was hot, I thought everyone would be wearing light suits -- so I wore a brown suit. Almost everyone else wore a black suit. Is this a trend, or do guys wear black because that's all they have?

AF, who acquired his only suit on the day of his birth, turns to Esquire's fashion director, Nick "the Nickster" Sullivan, for his kind assistance:

"Black is indeed the default setting for guys who don't have several suits. Given that a lot of American weddings are black-tie, they may have been trying to cut corners. In Europe, black suits are seen as not appropriate at weddings because they are reserved mainly for funerals."

An odd tip coming from the devil-may-care Nickster, who has been seen at European funerals wearing only a kerchief wrapped around his garyuhl.